


Nobody Knows

by AsIToldYoo



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anxiety, Depression, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Slow Updates, Stress, mental breakdowns, mentions of idols from other groups, might be suicidal who knows, model student! Jinyoung, tags will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-18 20:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17587913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsIToldYoo/pseuds/AsIToldYoo
Summary: Park Jinyoung, model student, popular, incredibly handsome. He lived the perfect life. Or so people thought. What people didn't see, and what Jinyoung was determined to hide, was the whirlwind of darkness that made up most of him. No one knew, and it was supposed to stay like that.Also known as, my life is crumbling and so I'm projecting onto poor Jinyoung. I don't even know anymore but please read!





	1. Lost

Park Jinyoung, model student, popular, incredibly handsome. He lived the perfect life. Or so people thought. 

It’s not like what people were saying wasn’t true, Jinyoung thought to himself as he made his way to class. He did have a pretty decent life compared to a lot of people. He didn’t struggle in class like most of his classmates. Of course, he wasn’t a god at studies, unlike Aron or Namjoon, but he was constantly in the top 10, year after year. He had his “fall from grace” years ago back at the start of middle school when he dropped from first in the grade to the top 5, but he didn’t care that much. He was still good at studies, why would he? He was relatively athletic too, exercising regularly, going to the gym or going swimming. He had a lot of friends too, no best friend, but many close friends and he was on decent terms with almost everyone in their grade. What wasn’t to like about his life? His parents were a lot less strict since he established as a kid that he was a hard worker and they didn’t need to worry about his academics. 

There was a side to Jinyoung that no one else saw though. Or at least he tried to minimise the number of people who saw this side of him. His insecurities, his worries, the dark side of him that no one needed to know about. He acted all cool and confident, playful with his friends, constantly sarcastic and he pretended that he didn’t need anyone. He actually was the complete opposite though. As much as he enjoyed being alone and having time to himself, he also needed a link to other people all the time. Whether it was an ongoing Skype call where no one was speaking or a slow text conversation, he needed to know that someone was there. He craved attention and appreciation, he was hungry for approval, which is why he staged the best versions of himself for the world to see. 

Jinyoung was a whirlwind, a mixture of colours on a palette, so many sides and emotions even he didn’t know who he was half the time. Sometimes he’d be passionate, when he was being the best student leader he could be, sometimes he was cool and carefree, not caring about obstacles in his path, finding a way to solve problems easily. Sometimes he was the best friend someone could ask for, putting everything aside for a friend in need, ignoring his own bad test score to comfort someone crying. Other times, he was vicious, selfish, tearing through people he didn’t like with venomous words, ignoring the world and everyone around him, not caring what people thought. He was careless, callous, unfeeling and distant. All these sides of him were constantly battling for power, sometimes threatening to overwhelm him until he got himself under control. Jinyoung needed to look strong for everyone else. This is what he had thought his entire life. 

The second year of high school was when most students’ lives descended into hell. It hadn’t even been a month when his friends started having mental breakdowns due to stress, or because of nasty rumours or comments thrown at them in the toxic environment that had been created out of a hundred teenagers battling against the pressure of high school. Everyone was fighting for leadership spots, complaining about their subject choices, debating future university applications and trying to balance academics with extra-curricular and regular exercise - which was a must for them to all graduate. It was chaos. But Jinyoung stayed sane through it all. Mostly. When his friends cried in his arms during breaks at school or when they were too panicked to even think straight, he’d just smile and pat them comfortingly until they’d calm down. At night, he’d curl in on himself, hugging himself as he tried not to let his panic win against him, eyes squeezing shut to stop himself from crying and it showing the next morning. People asked him, “How are you not breaking down right now?” His default answer was always, ”Oh it’s fine so far, and besides, I’m dead inside so I really don’t care anymore. It’s just going to get worse in the future so I’m preparing myself for that.” What a lie. The real answer would be, “I am breaking down, I just make sure none of you can see it. If anything, I’m panicking more than any of you.” That may not have been entirely true either, but it certainly felt like it. 

He felt constantly on edge, his negativity permanently threatening to crash through his weakening barriers and drown him. More and more, he was feeling like he didn’t have a will to live, that he would rather just sleep through the rest of his life, that he didn’t even care about the people around him. More and more, he was filled with bitterness and jealousy when people around him looked genuinely happy, because when was the last time he could feel like that without some inner anxiety gnawing at his conscience? 

Remember how Jinyoung was decently popular, well that was a lie. He had friends, quite a lot of them. But no one close enough to know all of him completely. Of course, his closer friends knew more, but not everything. Jinyoung had never had a “best friend” for more than maybe a couple of years. Somehow he always ended up growing further and further away. The more he exposed himself to them, the more vulnerable he felt, and the more it hurt when they were no longer in his life. So he never gave up himself completely, most of his friends only say the tip of the iceberg. The rest of himself, Jinyoung kept hidden and locked in himself, so he felt secure and safe. The safe with his emotions. He compressed them in himself, waiting for the timer to reach the end, for himself to self-destruct, then recover and repeat the process all over again. It wasn’t healthy, he knew that, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. 

Another thing was that at his age, most people had dreams. Even the worst of students seemed to know what they liked, what they didn’t like. They knew what area of study they would be aiming to pursue in the future, what general field they wanted to work in. So many people aspired to be lawyers, doctors, journalists, architects, engineers. All the top students especially, had planned out their future exactly and knew exactly what they were working towards. But not Jinyoung. He had no direction. He had picked his final subject combination through the painful process of elimination. He was pretty good at math, but did he really feel passionate about it? No. He liked art well enough to always have some small piece of art he was working on at home but did he want to build his future on something as subjective as art? Of course not. He was good at economics and worked well with numbers but did he like doing it? No idea. He didn’t even know what he liked or disliked, sometimes he’d hate a subject, sometimes he’d be willing to pour hours of effort into it. Half the time he felt like he was standing at a crossroads with hundreds of paths leading into the future, but he couldn’t even pick one to try. He was completely lost. All his life, he’d gotten as far as he had with the mindset that “if I work hard on everything now and do everything to the best of my ability, my future will be fine”. He’d done that, but his future was becoming more and more uncertain. Internship application deadlines approached, deadlines for choosing a subject to write an academic paper on were close, and he had absolutely no idea what he wanted. All around him his friends filled out their top three choices on subject and research questions regarding what academic paper to write. They were all goal-driven. The aspiring medical field experts filling out the chemistry and biology spots, future lawyers fighting for spots in English and history. Jinyoung half-assed a proposal for physics, one of the hardest subjects available and handed it in. He would’ve done math but it was notoriously difficult so he chose physics, purely because it would give him the most opportunities in the future. 

Park Jinyoung was a mess. But he made sure no one knew. The less people knew, the better.


	2. A good student

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's so much going on right now and I'm kind of just...lost. I don't know. I'm only posting this for now by the way, I'm going on holiday for a week and I don't know if I'll be able to post until I come back home. But yeah, enjoy this chapter~

What normal high-schooler has their life together? Of course disregarding the gods among men like Kim Namjoon, student council president and responsible athletic council president Son Hyunwoo. Jinyoung himself was counted as more than just a mere mortal, however, being one of the eight house leaders in the school. 

“Jinyoungie!!!” Jinyoung’s train of thought was disrupted as he watched one of his closest friends, Jackson, hurtle towards him, shrieking at the top of his lungs. 

“What. Do. You. Want. Oh my god let me go you’re crushing my lungs.” 

“Don’t lie Jinyoung~~ I know you love my hugs.” But Jackson let him go anyways. Jinyoung shot a glare at his friend and readjusted the collar of his uniform. 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night Jackson.” He had known Jackson forever. Actually, he had known most of his classmates forever. Most of their grade had been in the school since elementary and they had grown up together. It was only in the past two years that Jinyoung had grown closer to Jackson, however, as he grew more confident and outgoing. As a kid, he had always found the other boy too loud to be with him for long but they had always been on friendly terms. Last year they grew close after Jinyoung had helped Jackson out with some math questions during the year-end exam period, and now Jackson was firmly glued onto him. “Are you ready for the physics test Jinyoung?” 

“Uh…no? Who’s ever ready for a text Mr Kim sets?”

“True he does set ridiculously weird and stupidly difficult tests.”

“I better pass.”

“I know you will.”

“We both will.”

With a final hug, the pair walked into the exam room ready to face whatever test their teacher had managed to create this time. As he flipped through the paper, all Jinyoung could think was: what the hell. This wasn’t like anything he had prepared for. Okay fine, he hadn’t studied as much as he could have, favouring the current sketch he was working on, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t study. He had tried all the hardest questions from his resources but this was nothing like those. At all. After he managed to scribble something down in every question, he went back, wracking his brain, trying to find a solution to some of the harder questions on the paper that he actually had no idea how to do. 

The short test passed quickly, but it left their entire class entirely drained. As he glanced around him, he met the eyes of Jackson and Joshua and the three of them burst out laughing. This was met with confused stares for the soulless forms of their classmates. They couldn’t stop though. That paper was insane and they were at the point where they couldn’t bring themselves to do anything more than laugh through their misery. “Okay, you guys are dismissed, enjoy the rest of your day.” Mr Kim dismissed their class with a concerned glance thrown in the direction of the three boys. But of course he knew, the three of them were good students and they weren’t insane…most of the time. 

“As if anyone could enjoy their day after that hell,” Joshua muttered as the class shuffled out of the room, already beginning to discuss answers. He walked past Jimin, whose eyes were red-rimmed from trying not to cry. Jinyoung patted the shorter boy on the back but didn’t say anything and continued on his way out. “He’s going to break down soon you know. He takes everything so seriously he cries after almost every physics test. After we take the paper and after we get it back. As if it's even possible to do well in anything Mr Kim sets. It’s a miracle that we’re passing.”

“I’m going to be so amazed if I manage to pass this test though this was way beyond the difficulty of the past two.”

“Ugh, you’re right there. Please have mercy on me.” Jackson mimed praying at the sky while Jinyoung and Joshua laughed. They knew well enough that Jackson would do well compared to the rest of their class. Jackson was loud and occasionally annoying, but he was also very smart and mature, responsible and hard-working. The last test, he had only lost to Jinyoung by a mark, though it still meant he failed while Jinyoung scraped a pass. Okay maybe now is a good time for more context. Since elementary school, their school had drilled into them that 50% was a pass, but in their new syllabus for the last two years of high school, the definition of a pass was different for every subject. For their physics course, the actual “passing” boundary was somewhere near 30% because of how hard the course was. However, all the students still used 50% to define a pass, so the few top students had never actually “failed” anything. Of course for small tests, things they didn’t care about, or ridiculously hard exams, getting below a 50% was pretty common, even among the top few kids, who knew how to prioritise. But it wasn’t like that for Jinyoung. He had never gotten below an A since his first year of official schooling, save for a single B in physical education one year, because he was not made for sports like volleyball sue him. Later on, they got number grades as well as the letter grade, and never, never in his life did he get anywhere near 50% and he was extremely proud of that fact. 

Nowadays, however, as his will to study hard gradually slipped out of his grasp, he walked out of exams and tests having no sense whatsoever about how he did. He could just hope he had prepared enough to do decently. Most of the time he just drifted through classes and tests. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. He no longer panicked over every single tiny quid or test, but he studied for them without fail. 

“Hey, how’d your test go?” A cheerful boy, Youngjae, approached the three boys, a cautious yet curious look on his face. Youngjae was friends with all three of them and he was smart enough to not have taken physics but was subjected to listening to Jinyoung and Jackson telling physics horror stories all the time. “A complete disaster,” was the unanimous answer. Though they all said it with slight smiles, Jinyoung saw his own exhaustion and worry reflected in Jackson and Joshua’s eyes. 

“Ah, I’m sure you guys did well! You guys are so smart!” With that, Youngjae turned around and ran back to where he came from, a long table where he was working on his art assignments with a fellow student, Jaebum. Jaebum had just come to their school two years ago, and because he wasn’t in the same classes as Jinyoung, despite taking similar subjects, the two had rarely spoken apart from short greetings and questions regarding their academic life and such. It was interesting that they weren’t friends. The two seemed pretty alike and their groups of friends overlapped a lot. But Jaebum seemed to be the cool and emo type, never really participating in social activities, always standing near the back of whatever event his friends had dragged him to, seemingly content to just watch the events unfold before him. Jinyoung could relate. But he always felt that the other boy seemed too distant and never had the time or courage to talk to him properly. 

“Ah, I’ve got to go for student council meeting. Bye guys!” With a cheerful wave, Joshua walked off, leaving Jinyoung and Jackson in the corridor. They walked over to where some of the history students were poring over their notes, cramming for a test that was in a few hours. “You guys look stressed.”

“No crap Jinyoung we’re all dying here. If I don’t do well on this test my grade for this semester is doomed.” Yoo Kihyun was a short boy who always looked like he was on the verge of having a mental breakdown these days. Jinyoung liked him and they had been close friends before, but they had gradually grown apart when they chose vastly different subjects in the last year of middle school. Kihyun’s comment was met with a snort from Jackson,” yeah as is the history god Yoo Kihyun could screw up anything”. He had a point. Kihyun was one of the most well-rounded students in their grade and was constantly near the top along with Jinyoung and Jackson. He was especially known for being amazing at History. The boy seemed to have a talent for memorising things no one else had space in their brains for and pulling points out of seemingly nowhere and bluffing his way through analyses of sources to top grades in the course. “Shut up Wang. I hate this topic I swear revising this has cut ten years off my lifespan. I can’t even pronounce half of these guys’ names. Why do so many historical figures have such weird names.”

“Well, at least it took ten years off your life and not ten centimetres off your height yeah?” 

“JACKSON WANG PISS OFF!”

“Okay okay I’m going, good luck later!”

As he watched his friend get whacked with a thick history textbook, Jinyoung sat down on the bench next to the rest of the history kids, observing them studying. 

“Okay that’s it I can’t do this anymore.” Yugyeom, one of the tallest students in their grade despite also being one of the youngest, slammed his book shut and collapsed face-down onto the table. “Hey kid, it’s going to be fine okay? I have faith in you. Don’t stress out too much.” Jinyoung rubbed comforting circles into Yugyeom’s back, the act of comforting someone so deeply ingrained into him from the past couple of months he didn’t even think about it. He slung an arm around the younger boy, pulling him in against his chest and he felt Yugyeom slowly relax. He stayed like that for a few minutes before Jackson reminded him that they had to leave for class. “Okay ‘Gyeomie, I’ve got to go. You got this, don’t panic.” With that, he stood up and left with Jackson. “You’re so good at comforting people Jinyoungie. No wonder your kids call you mom. Responsible, caring, good at comforting people, wow.”

Ugh. His “kids”. Jinyoung was a house leader in their school. The house system was simple, the school was split into four houses, so each grade level was split into four classes. One house was made of one class from each year level. Two kids from second-year of high school survived the election process to become the house leaders of every house. Jinyoung was one of them. Each of the classes below him had two house representatives, and the eight representatives along with the house leaders made up the internal house team. While the other house internals teams had mostly purely business relationships, the representatives under Jinyoung clung to him. They talked in their group chat about everything from future subject choice advice from the older kids to their juniors to the different ships and all the drama from every year group. They were like a family and were so close Jinyoung had started calling the representatives his “kids”. To be honest he felt like they were the younger siblings he never had and he also felt a responsibility to them for being their senior and house leader. 

“Nah, I’m not that good at comforting. I don’t say much, I just kind of hug people and like repeatedly tell them they can do it and I believe in them and stuff like that. It’s pretty generic.” 

“Yeah but I don’t know, it seems to be especially effective when it comes from you I guess? You have this presence that calms people down.” 

“I hope you’re not calling my boring or something.”

“Of course not! I’m genuinely complimenting you!”

“Okay. Thanks Jackson. Everyone’s just way too stressed right now, they need someone to be there for them. They’re dealing with way too much.”

“You say that as if you’re not dealing with the same things, if not more. You’re a good person Jinyoungie.”

_I don’t do anything special though. I just comfort people the way I want to be comforted. I don’t want them to deal with the inner darkness on their own. It sucks. I should know._


	3. Failure

Park Jinyoung, responsible, a good role model, a good student with good grades. Even he had thought that about himself a lot of the time. Not now though. He stared at his physics test with a look of absolute terror. “16/38” stared back at him, the bright red of the numbers searing themselves into the back of his eyelids. What. The. Hell. How could he have done this? He had actually studied for this test. Although it was still a pass and a decent grade at that when you looked at the boundaries of the actual course, he had failed miserably going by the 50% standard. 

“What…I…How…” Jinyoung knew that he looked and sounded like he was on the verge of breaking down, but he couldn’t do anything about it. His mind was working frantically but at the same time, not working at all, his entire being frozen in shock. Jackson was sitting next to him and he had caught a glimpse of Jinyoung’s mark before Jinyoung had frantically flipped his paper over, face paling. Jinyoung felt a had on his back. Jackson’s attempt to console him, he guessed. But it wasn’t comforting at all. Not to Jinyoung. It felt like pity and it felt like Jackson was only doing this because he had won and because he was obliged to comfort Jinyoung because he was his friend. Deep down, Jinyoung knew that was unfair, that Jackson had always been by his side and that he was an amazing friend. But none of that was at the forefront of his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Joshua glancing at him worriedly, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Joshua. They had joked around together before and after the test, sure that they would get similar marks as always, even though it was always Joshua who was ahead by a few points. That was fine. Not this time though, not when Joshua got the highest in class at 28/38. It wasn’t actually that good a mark, but considering that the test was hard and that everyone else did so badly, it was amazing. Jackson was second in class, two marks way from Joshua, and this was why Jinyoung couldn’t look at either of his friends right now. 

“Jinyoung, what happened? This isn’t like you.” Jinyoung looked up in his shocked daze to see Mr Kim looking down at him. Frantically, he pasted a smile onto his face and tried his best to not look too shaken. “I don’t know…I wasn’t thinking straight when I was doing the paper I think.” He laughed a little at the end, partly to try and sound more carefree so the people around him would stop looking so damned concerned, and partly because he remembered his mind completely blanking out and being in a complete state of confusion when he was actually doing the paper. “Okay, it’s okay to not do well sometimes. I know you’ll do better next test.” Jinyoung knew that his teacher could see the panic in his eyes and was trying to be comforting, but everything sounded like a reprimand, his brain refusing to register anything positive at the moment. 

He could hear sniffling coming from in front of him, where Jimin was seated, so he kicked Jimin’s chair slightly, waiting for the smaller boy to turn around. “Hey Jimin how’d you do?” 

“14. What the heck. I studied so hard for this too…”

“Hey, we have about the same mark. Let’s study harder and ace the next one together okay?” He high-fives the boy in front of him before finally looking down at his own test paper. 

“Jackson, let me see yours, I seriously don’t know how to do this question. Did you get it right?”

“Probably not but here you go.”

This was one of his habits. Jinyoung always tried to pretend that everything was normal and everything was fine when on the inside, he was breaking down. Jackson always let it happen, but never ever left Jinyoung’s side. Once, during the Christmas celebrations at school earlier in the year, there was an inter-house dance battle. Every house had spent months working on it. Jinyoung had poured his blood sweat and tears into preparations, as had his house representatives. But they had lost to the other three houses miserably. Even with two house leaders who were always arguing and doing absolutely nothing for their house, the largest house in their school had beaten them. Jinyoung had been devastated and frustrated. His own partner had been slacking off the entire time and had done basically nothing to help the house prepare for the dance battle. After the results had been announced, Jinyoung had tried to hold in his feelings, but when the former house leader from the year above him came and hugged him, telling him that he worked hard, he broke down. He had sobbed then and there, in the bleachers of the school gymnasium with the entire school population there. His house reps and his friends had been quick to rush over and comfort him, saying things like “oh it’s not your fault you had to singlehandedly do everything” or “it’s because of people who can’t be bothered to practice and they think that being apathetic is cool but they’re the most pathetic”. He had sobbed into Jackson’s shoulder then, unable to control himself properly. As soon as his brain had calmed down but way before the tears stopped streaming down his face, Jinyoung had run around the gym, cleaning up after his house and collecting the props they had used that were left on either side of the gym. He tried to ignore comforting words from people and insisted that he was fine and that he needed to tidy things up and everyone should go first and they didn’t have to wait for him to finish clearing up. It was the last day of school after all and he didn’t want people wasting their time worrying about him. Later, after bringing the boxes of stuff back down to the storage rooms and crying on one of the couches in the school library, he had opened his phone to see texts from various people, most including a few bright pink and red hearts as they tried to make him feel better. Even his seniors that he rarely talked to outside of occasionally asking for advice had messaged him, telling him that he was an amazing leader and that they would work harder in future events like sports day.

He had been touched by all the messages, truly, but there was also the feeling of self-doubt and guilt deep in his gut. If he were truly a good leader, shouldn’t he have been able to motivate the entire house to practice more and to make even the most stubborn kids more enthusiastic? If he really were a good leader, shouldn’t he have the ability to lead a hundred students and teachers easily, especially with the amazing team he had? He had wallowed in his self-deprecation for the next few days of the break before he had forced himself to focus on the next event, then the next. 

The Christmas celebrations had been his first taste of what it meant to fail, except because that was a team effort, it couldn’t really be counted as a true failure. But this, this disastrous test paper in front of him was a hundred percent his fault, his own doing. Jinyoung could feel the last ten years of hard work, the facades and effort put into making people believe he was great crumbling down to nothing. 

The fact that he managed to get through the rest of the lesson was nothing short of a miracle, and he shot a text to Jackson, asking him if he was going home. His friend had bolted right after class saying he had to deal with some of his council work. Jackson was an athletic council member and he had to frequently stay back after school to work on their events. He got a text back from Jackson pretty soon: yeah ill be done in a few wait for me on the fourth floor if you want.

Jinyoung made his way down to the fourth floor, grateful that physics had been the last lesson so he didn’t have to go through a school day feeling like he was about to break down. That would’ve been terrible. He walked over to the open area where the year elevens always occupied the most space. This was no exception, even now after school, there were a few people from his grade sitting at the tables and chatting. Jinyoung walked over to them and jumped up to sit on a table, next to Youngjae. 

“I heard about the test Jinyoung, how was it I heard everyone did terrible.” He didn’t have to say anything in response though. All Jinyoung did was shake his head slightly before resting it on Youngjae’s shoulder. The younger boy’s arms were around him in an instant, and at that moment, Jinyoung felt the cracks in his walls widening slightly. He couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down his face. “This is the first time I’ve ever failed…I…I tried…I revised…but…” 

“Shhh Jinyoung hyung, it’s ok. I can’t relate but it’ll be fine yeah? You’re so good at everything normally, but you’re human too. This is normal okay?”

Jinyoung chuckled a little at Youngjae poking fun at himself. Youngjae said he couldn’t relate because he was no stranger to failing tests, especially when it came to math, his weakest subject. But the boy always took it with a smile, and Jinyoung envied him for that. He sat there a bit longer, head buried in Youngjae’s soft sweater, willing his tears to stop. 

“Hey, Jinyoung, are you okay?”

Jinyoung lifted his face up enough just to see Jaebum’s handsome face peering at him. “Uh…yeah I’m fine. Didn’t do well in a test. I’ll be okay.”

“Okay then. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. Don’t beat yourself up over a test that won’t affect your future that much.”

“Thanks Jaebum.” 

Watching Jaebum shoulder his schoolbag and walk off, Jinyoung muttered,” What the hell, we’re not even that close. Also, of course he’ll tell me that its all okay, he’s what? Second in our grade? He’s such a god. When will I ever.” Jaebum had only come to their school relatively recently, compared to everyone who had been here since they even started school. Last year, Jaebum had managed to get second in grade, beating Shownu, Aron, Joshua, even Kihyun, Jinyoung and Jackson. Jinyoung and Jackson had been eighth and tenth respectively, which was decent considering they had chosen difficult subject combinations. Of course Namjoon had gotten first, he had been top in grade since they started secondary school. He was almost like the literal definition of god. Namjoon was one of Jinyoung’s fellow heads of houses and also a member in the community council. He was nice to most people but not afraid to let people know when he didn’t like them. He was responsible, organised, had amazing grades, an overall model student. Shownu and Aron had been top picks to get second and third, but Jaebum had shown up out of nowhere and pushed them to second and third. Everyone had been extremely shocked. 

“Actually, he mentioned to me before that he used to be a failing student in primary, before he transferred over here.” Jinyoung was jolted out of his thoughts by Youngjae responding to his earlier comments about Jaebum. 

“Seriously? Im Jaebum? A failing student? Wow I would never have guessed that.”

“Yeah, I was surprised too. He said that secondary school was a shock that forced him to start getting his life together.”

“Damn.”

“I know.”

At that point, Jackson came running from the staircase, panting as he reached Jinyoung and Youngjae. Everyone else around them were too used to Jackson to even be bothered to spare him a glance. “I. Freaking. Hate. The rest of the council. Are they stupid what on earth. It’s not that hard to split people into groups for gods sake!”

“Jacks, chill.” Jinyoung dragged himself tiredly from where he’d been resting with his head on Youngjae’s shoulder and walked over to pat his friend on the arm comfortingly. “Hey, at least you don’t have to deal with like a hundred apathetic kids?”

“True, but I’m this close to throwing the year seven and eight members off the damn building. How hard is it to read emails properly and to follow instructions?”

“Hey come on Jackson let’s go home, we can get food on the way.” After waving to Youngjae, who had to stay back to work on an art piece, the two boys headed out of the school building.

Jinyoung went home after school that day, head whirling, weighed down by his physics results and also, curious over the mystery known as Im Jaebum.


End file.
